Today one of my friends talked me into taking a look at the .300 Weatherby. So I looked for a scope pakage in the Weatherby Vanguard S2 ( for the low price ). I was wondering if my kid could partake in shooting it with me. He won't shoot it often ( he has his 20 gauge ) maybe once a month. For shooting at the range the gun will weigh around 10-12 lbs and 9 for hunting. He would shoot 130-150 grain bullets. I looked at Chuck Hawk's recoil table and with a 9.25 lb gun shooting a 150 grain bullet at 3400 fps has 24.6 ft.lbs and 13.1 velocity, but I figured a 2.75 lb heavier gun shooting a 130 grain bullet would have much less recoil.

My first question for you is how are you going to get rid of almost 3 pounds of weight going from target shooting to hunting? Also you will not find very many loads for a .300 Weatherby in the 130-150 grain loads, and the ones that you do will be expensive. The Weatherby was designed to shoot 165+grain bullets fast. The idea was to give the shooter the same ballistics with a heaver bullet as other rifles do with lighter ones.

Your kid may like shooting it and he may not, you are not going to find out until he pulls the trigger on a load in chamber and he feels the recoil

I do not understand why so many parent's seem to believe that the cartridge they need to get their kids going is some monster magnum they likely won't shoot near as well as some smaller standard cartridge. For some reason, the parent's seem to think that this is the last rifle their kid will ever have and they want the kid to be ready for anything up to and including dangerious animals or for the possibility of some super long range shot. If the parent or kid can affort the practice to become proficient at long range or can afford the cost of an out of state hunt for some dangerious game or special game, sheep, they will be able to afford another rifle in a more suitable cartridge.

I would encourage the OP to get a cartridge more suitable to the kid. Very easy to do in a lot of suitable standard cartridge's with ammo that is far less expensive. if you could get the 300 Weatherby in a Vanguard or a 243 win in the same Vanguard, the most glaring difference would be the price of ammo. It will take a lot more shooting to shoot well with the Weatherby than it will with the 243 Win and the Weatherby ammo is going to be much more expensive and not as readily avaliable as the 243 Win. So the cartridge that require;s the most practice to master has ammo that is much more expensive.

What kind of reasoning by this friend convinced you to look into a 300 Weatherby?

The quandary of all hunters is how do I give myself the best chance to take home a trophy animal after shelling out hundreds of dollars for that coveted tag in another state. I face this issue this year with an Antelope tag in Colorado. Now I know that Antelope should be the easiest tag to fill in NorthWest Colorado. They are everywhere, but how do we give ourselves the best chance to take home that one animal that eludes everyone else. My advice, first and foremost, is don't shoot your...